AMITAV GHOSH’S THE SHADOW LINES : A YEARNING FOR A WORLD INHABITED BY A COMMON HUMANITY

Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines echoes with a yearning for a world inhabited by a a common humanity and not by nations. As humanity is solely represented by human beings with different names, it is needless to draw demarcations which are regarded as shadow lines by the writer. To establish his claim, the writer terms the boundaries as absurd illusions incapable of wining over memory. The writer also identifies the boundaries as the source of violence. As an outcome of nationalism or an extreme love for freedom, boundaries appear. Then it becomes the mother of terrorism. Chauvinism, religious fanaticism etc. gives impetus to this. The year 1947 marks the collapse of colonial British rule in Indian Sub-continent. Then lines were drawn up dividing the sub-continent into two parts namely India and Pakistan. As a result, Bengal was also dividen into two ? the West Bengal became the part of India when East Bengal was united with Pakistan taking the new name East Pakistan. Thousands of people were exiled. Three generations of a Bengali family dispersed across three countries as a consequence of this historical change. The partition fails to serve the real purpose being the freedom of people. In fact, it was an inversion of the expected result. This situation makes Ghosh interrogate the existence of boundary, the modern sense of freedom and nationality. Being utterly dissatisfied with the violence followed by the partition, Ghosh calls for doing away with borders to establish a world where only humanity will inhabit with a single identity abolishing different national identities. Throughout the novel, he presents many justifications for making his proposal well-grounded.